Though it’s still very early in the NCAA season, the Pinch-A-Penny All-Florida Invitational offered a quick glimpse at a few of the NCAAs top swimmers in a three-day, prelims-finals meet format. The combination of that format and the noticeable star power on deck (a meet featuring California and Florida will have no shortage of that) make the All-Florida Invite worth one more hindsight glance, now that the dust has all settled.
So without further ado, here’s a listing of 6 things we noticed at one of the early high points of the coming NCAA season:
1. The youth is starting to come through for Cal: The All-Florida Invite was a bit of a misnomer this season as the Golden Bears of Berkeley, California made the trek to Gainesville for the traditionally-in-state shootout. But Cal showed perhaps the biggest development of the meet, which was their young talent starting to swim up to potential – at least, for this point in the young season.
Cal was highly-praised in the 2013 offseason for acquiring one of the most talented freshman classes the nation had seen to that point. Expectations soared, and though the Bears were far from awful last season, they also didn’t live up to the sky-high expectations their talent saddled them with.
But Cal got some big swims from some young talents this weekend that might suggest 2014-2015 is a new season. Start with Celina Li, who’s been red-hot through the first two meets. After winning the “Queen of the Pool” title at Cal-Poly’s pentathlon, Li won two events and took second in another at the All-Florida meet, with her winning 200 IM (1:58.81) and 200 fly (1:58.38) both lead the nation so far this season. Then there’s Farida Osman. The Egyptian Olympian didn’t have a bad season as a freshman, hitting lifetime-bests in all three races, but her times from this weekend put her a step ahead of where she was a year ago. Probably most impressive was her 54.57 swim in the 100 fly, a half second faster than she was at this time last year.
Newcomer Noemie Thomas, though, looks like she’s in line to skip the sophomore breakout and just do it as a freshman instead. Thomas has looked great in the butterfly races so far, and her 53.59 from the All-Florida Invite sits second in the nation to only event winner Natalie Hinds of Florida.
2. Florida has filled-in top end after big graduations: The Florida Gators graduated some of their biggest names in a long time in both genders last season. It starts with Elizabeth Beisel but also includes Brad deBorde, Marcin Cieslak and Sebastien Rousseau among others.
But the Gators don’t seem to have a problem with top-end talent this season, as the remaining members have stepped up in the early goings. Chief among them is Natalie Hinds, who is about the polar opposite of Beisel in the pool. Where Beisel was a distance machine, Hinds is a fast-twitch sprinter, and while she doesn’t have Beisel’s versatility or ability to swim tough doubles, Hinds probably brings more to the table as a relay threat than her predeccessor. Hinds came up big this weekend, with a nation-leading 53.44 in the 100 fly among other races.
A few others who stepped up big at the top for Florida:
- Jessica Thielmann: won the 500 (4:47.82) and 1650 (16:27.06) while swimming a tough slate of events
- Mitch D’Arrigo: followed up an impressive summer with a win in the 500 free (4:24.67) and a runner-up 200 (1:38.15)
- Matt Elliott: the senior breaststroker came up with 3 tough wins in the 100 breast (54.72), 200 breast (1:58.05) and 400 IM (3:51.04)
- Corey Main: the New Zealander is looking like a backstroke stud with 48.45/1:45.51 wins for the Gators
- Pawel Werner: topped D’Arrigo in the 200 free (1:37.08), won the 100 free (44.12) over Caeleb Dressel and consistently came up with giant relay splits for Florida (20.07/43.43/1:37.74)
The issue for Florida this season will be depth, but with those stars leading the way (and Theresa Michalak becoming eligible at the semester), the pieces are in place for Florida to weather tough graduations.
3. Sickert looks like a D-II powerhouse: Nova Southeastern’s Thiago Sickert is a 26-year-old freshman, and he looks primed to make some huge waves in the Division II landscape as a first-year. Sickert was second in the 50, going 20.46 and beating the highly-touted Dressel for the Sharks. He also took second behind Dressel in the 100 fly at 48.23 and was top 3 in the 100 back and 100 free. His 50 free and 100 fly would have scored at last year’s NCAA Division II Championships, and the Brazilian still has a full season left to improve before he tapers and shaves.
4. Missy Franklin looks back on track: After a debilitating back injury limited Franklin at Pan Pacs this summer, the sophomore only competed in about half of Cal’s “Queen of the Pool” meet, prompting a bit of concern from fans. But it’s only October and Franklin appears to be healthy and back to her usually-quick self, getting multiple wins in Florida.
Franklin was 1:46.37 to win the 200 free, the event in which she set an American record at NCAAs last year. She also made her long-awaited return to the backstrokes in college competition after swimming mostly freestyle last post-season to better fill out Cal’s lineup. Franklin won the 100 backstroke in 54.05 and took second in the 200 (1:56.62) to her American record-holding teammate Liz Pelton. It remains to be seen if Franklin sticks in the backstrokes this season, but it seems a decent bet she’ll get to swim at least one backstroke race in what is presumed to be her final NCAA season.
5. McKnight filling multiple roles for Florida: With the graduation of breaststroker Hilda Luthersdottir, breaststroke is an area of concern for the Gators. But junior Lindsey McKnight has been a Swiss Army Knife for Florida so far in filling gaps, and she’s taken on the breaststroke role with solid success. McKnight came within a few tenths of winning the 100 breast this weekend, and though she’ll need to be faster than a 1:03.83 to be a major player for Florida individually, McKnight looks like she could at least keep the Gators afloat through that leg on relays. McKnight was a relay machine, putting up big medley splits (28.57 and 1:02.32) as well as strong legs of all three free relays including a team-best 1:49.52 on the 800 free relay.
6. Diving skews the scores a bit: Though Florida’s women crushed Cal by a considerable margin in the team scores, the result is a little misleading because of a lightly-attended diving meet. Only Florida and Florida Gulf Coast brought divers to the meet at all, and with championship scoring in effect, those two teams profited in a big way. In just two diving events, Florida scored 182 diving points, going 1-2-3-4-6-7 on 1-meter with a similar result on 3-meter. That’s not to take anything away from the Gators, who swam great and deserved the win. But it’s far from a prediction of things to come in the post-season. Florida is probably better than Cal in diving, but won’t outscore the Bears 182-0 in the diving events at NCAAs, so it’s worth taking the meet’s final score with a grain of salt.
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Missy’s on the mend, but if she were completely healthy Teri wouldn’t have kept her off all relays. The Bears are adding Noemie and Cierra Runge into the relay mix and Teri needs to see how all the pieces fit together. Especially since Cal had relay DQs at both Pac-12s and NCAAs last season. Fast early season time for Pelton in the 200 back.
26 year old Freshman!! Where is it going to end – think NCAA needs to put an upper age limit on Freshman student athletes.
That’s what D2’s all about! I do not envy their announcer at nationals trying to pronounce the last names of the swimmers. It’s like alphabet soup.